Donald Trump’s First Major Foreign Policy Speech is Full of Holes

Reviews are in for Donald Trump’s first major foray into foreign policy. And they aren’t glowing. USA Today reports:

In his foreign policy speech, Donald Trump claimed that “now ISIS is making millions and millions of dollars a week selling Libya oil.” But an expert on Libya’s oil operations told us there’s no evidence that the Islamic State is producing or selling oil out of that country.

Trump also repeated false and misleading claims that we have vetted before on the NAFTA pact, Iraq War and the U.S. trade deficit:

• Trump said NAFTA “literally emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs.” Actually, economic studies say NAFTA’s impact on U.S. jobs has been small.

• Trump claimed he was “totally against” the Iraq War and warned “that it would destabilize the Middle East.” There is no public record of him being against the war before it started.

• Trump said President Obama “crippled us” with “a huge trade deficit.” Actually, the trade deficit has gone down under Obama.

What was important about Donald Trump’s much anticipated foreign policy speech Wednesday is what he didn’t say. There was no mention by the self-declared Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee of his determination to build a wall between Mexico and the United States and get the Mexican government to pay for it.

There was only a passing reference to his frequent criticism of illegal immigrants, the theme that helped launch his presidential campaign last summer.

There was no mention of letting South Korea and Japan acquire nuclear weapons, or of walking away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the organization which protected Europe from Soviet aggression which he said earlier had outlived its usefulness.

Though he called the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran a “disaster,” he did not say that he would tear it up on day one or insist that it be renegotiated. He simply declared that Iran would not be permitted to get a nuclear weapon, which is precisely what President Obama said prior to signing his controversial agreement with Teheran.

Mr. Trump did not say he would defend Israel at all costs, though he called the Jewish state “our great friend and the one true democracy” in the Middle East.

He condemned the Obama administration’s abandonment of Middle Eastern Christians, but said nothing about how he would protect them from what he called the “genocide” being perpetrated by ISIS and other jihadi groups.

While he vowed to destroy the Islamic State “very, very quickly,” he gave no clue as to how he would defeat the group which now has billions of dollars in its coffers, tentacles in nine states, and tens of thousands of Arab and foreign fighters battling to build an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq and spread the group’s perverse interpretation of Islam throughout the world. And he did not repeat his claim that President Bush “lied” about Saddam’s having WMD to invade Iraq.

While this speech was more substantive than his debate performances and campaign speeches, at’s clear is that as Trump tries to pivot into the big leagues he’s walking on unfamiliar terrain.

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Carrie Sheffield is the founder of Bold. She is passionate about storytelling to empower and connect others. A founding reporter at POLITICO, Carrie contributed on political economy at Forbes, wrote editorials for The Washington Times under Tony Blankley and advised Bustle, a popular digital media brand. Carrie earned a master’s in public policy from Harvard University, concentrating in business policy. She has a B.A. in communications at Brigham Young University and completed a Fulbright fellowship in Berlin.